


Priorities

by jamocha101



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Bonding, Vietnam, war bots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 13:36:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamocha101/pseuds/jamocha101
Summary: Rabbit wanted badly to cover his own photo-receptors, but his hands were occupied with something much more important.





	Priorities

**Author's Note:**

> Male pronouns are used for Rabbit singularly because of the canon timeline.
> 
> There are probably multiple historical inaccuracies. Read at your own peril.

Rabbit’s head swam. He wanted to reach for his canteen, but his hands were pasted dumbly around an unloaded carbine, a weapon that wasn’t officially issued to any of the robots and was kept only for last-resort situations. The automatons had been fixed with various tentative upgrades to make self-defense, rescue, and scouting optimal, but Rabbit had become so intrinsically adjusted to the advent of carting weaponry that he felt almost naked without it. 

He hated it.

His optics were trained ahead, worn in a perpetual scowl. The Spine was leading a line of scouts, and Rabbit was in the middle; The Jon took up the rear. Several privates were in between them. Occasionally, the copper bot looked over his shoulder to ensure that his youngest sibling was keeping up; albeit with hauntingly absent optics, he was. 

The atmosphere was heavy with moisture and the smell of black powder and decay. It was hell for the robots’ elevated senses. Their alloys were encrusted and logged with sluggish matter from the saturated terrain and their plates were coated in condensation from the humidity, almost like sweat. Their human companions fared similarly, if not worse. The team continued into denser, darker parts of the jungle, where sounds of shelling and death could be heard in the distance. But it was difficult to tell whether those noises were real, or if it was all a trick of a wayworn processor.

Rabbit stepped on a stick and snapped it, creating a loud pop. The entire squad jumped and froze in place, training their weapons on the source of the noise. In the back of the line, The Jon whimpered and shrunk back.

After a tense moment, Rabbit lowered his guards and removed his boot from the offensive branch on the good faith that he hadn’t stepped on a mine or some other kind of trap. “It’s all right,” he said with a nervous giggle, gesticulating a sign of relief. “Sticks in the jungle. Who’d have guessed?”

The joke didn’t land. A random private said, “Jesus Christ.”

The Spine, still at the front, scanned the environment. “Just watch your step,” he said. “We’re crossing into hostile territory.”

He turned to keep moving, the group in tow. But Rabbit couldn’t help but notice a hesitant presence in the back.

Jon was standing rigidly still, wide-eyed, like he was about to face his own doom. Rabbit cut out of the line and walked toward him, capturing the attention of the other privates; they turned and watched him wearily, reluctant to sacrifice the integrity of the formation. The momentary dissonance caused The Spine to notice as well, so he stopped the advance yet again and locked onto his brothers. 

“What’s the-the-the hold-up, The Jon?” Rabbit demanded, slinging his carbine off to the side. The Jon just stared ahead wordlessly until his eldest sibling clapped a copper hand to his shoulder. Concern washed over Rabbit; The Jon had the greatest propensity toward fear-induced paralysis, but his moments of torpor tended to amount to something more. “Jon?”

“We have to keep moving,” The Spine said from a few feet away. “The longer we stand in one spot, the more vulnerable we become. Let’s go.”

“No!” The Jon cried, causing everyone in his presence to jolt in surprise. Volume control had never been his strong point, but he seemed to get the idea when Rabbit immediately shushed him. “We can’t,” The Jon continued, fiddling nervously with his medic pack straps as he would have with his red suspenders if he still had them. 

“What do you mean, ‘we can’t’?” Rabbit asked, still grasping onto one of The Jon’s shoulders.

“Oh forget it,” a private, a tall brusque guy in his mid-twenties from somewhere in the mid-western U.S. deadpanned, clearly exasperated by the small brass bot’s eccentricities. “Just leave him. We don’t have time to stand around. We gotta keep movin’.”

He shoved a few privates aside to get to the front of the line, but a tall titanium robot stepped in the way to block his path. “We stay together,” The Spine said, his voice nonnegotiable. “Nobody’s leaving anybody behind.”

The wayward private looked about ready to attempt to size up the metallic squad leader, but he was stopped short when Rabbit’s voice broke back in, attempting yet again to coach The Jon out of his stupor. “What’s the matter, Jon?” the copper bot asked, bending over to get his small sibling to look him in the optics. But The Jon’s face was transfixed immovably forward. “Come on, buddy. Talk to me.”

Another private, this one sounding more scared then defiant, spoke up. “What’s wrong with it? Is it broken or something?”

Rabbit about reeled around to spat something sarcastic about the soldier’s insensitive use of the word “it” in reference to his brother, but The Jon didn’t seem to take note. He spoke up, thus cutting his elder brother off, his voice small and uneven. “It’s coming,” he whimpered. “We can’t go forward.”

The Spine took a few steps toward the brass bot now, cradling his carbine expertly in one arm. “What’s coming? What do you see, Jon?”

The Jon only hesitated more, as if rendered entirely unable to articulate. He looked at The Spine with agony in his photoreceptors, and the titanium bot in turn looked at Rabbit, with whom he exchanged identically unnerved expressions.

“Forget this,” one of the soldiers, the same impatient private who spoke up before, looked angrily toward the three robots. “I’m not gonna stand around here wait to get ambushed all because of that metal pipsqueak. I’m movin’ ahead, ‘case any of you real fellers wanna join me.” With that, he heaved up on his pack, adjusted his ammo straps, and continued forward now that a seven-foot-tall titanium robot wasn’t in the way to block him. But he barely made it three steps.

The Jon suddenly lunged forward, hand desperately outstretched. He could barely get out the words, “No, wait!” before everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

Rabbit reacted first. He didn’t even feel himself move; it was all instinct. With inexplicable speed, his hand shot out and he caught The Jon, yanked him back hard enough to almost sweep the brass bot off his feet, and before he could register it, Rabbit had him in a vice grip, back turned from the explosion. One of the copper bot’s forearms was thrown across The Jon’s eyes so he couldn’t see.

The private stepped onto a cartridge trap and it was the split second it took for his foot to fall through that everything seemed to happen at once. The ammunition shot up through his body and a horrid display of gruesome homicide exploded upwards into the trees, where bits of the soldier’s body sprayed the foliage. Rabbit saw the entire thing, fleeting though it was. He wanted desperately to cover his own eyes, but his arms were occupied with something much more important.

Another private had taken to the trees past the cartridge trap for cover, but he tripped a wire and within a second his body was impaled by a bamboo whip. Rabbit recoiled, folding himself over The Jon, who was clutching at Rabbit’s arm like a lifeline. Explosions followed in short order and The Spine ducked off in one direction for cover; Rabbit, with Jon in his grasp, shoved them both into a brush on the opposite side of the path, using his back to shield the little bot from the sparks and shards that showered them.

Once under cover of the foliage, Rabbit reached for his carbine with one arm, reluctant to free the other of its grip on The Jon. It was only when he had in position that he dared to get it loaded and duck up from behind brush to fire out a few rounds, hoping, at the very least, to hold the ambush off. In the split second that his head was raised from cover, he looked desperately around for The Spine, but only saw the gruesome sight of one of the private’s bodies getting exploded in close proximity to a grenade.

Rabbit ducked back behind the brush, dodging shrapnel and spray. Grenades and shells reigned supreme on the hapless infantry. He caught the sight of his littlest brother staring at him with huge, terrified optics, his trembling lips parting to yell something, but Rabbit grabbed onto him and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shush!” he commanded, paranoid of compromising their position. He had no orientation of the distance of their attackers, and god knew how much of the squad was already gone. The Jon was unarmed, and Rabbit had only his carbine and flame thrower. Powerful weapons, but not enough to defend himself and his brother from capture by a pride of VC.

The succession of explosions and screams intensified, and Rabbit shoved The Jon further into the brush, therein relinquishing himself to the sole duty of protecting his brother, clutching him in a vice grip that would have been fit to crush a human. He could feel The Jon trembling violently in his grasp, he could feel the small bot reach up and press his hands to his audio receptors, trying desperately to block it all out. Rabbit once again kept a hand slung across The Jon’s eyes, wanting desperately to bar him of all people from this nightmare, to shield his perception from the overload.

Neither of them could have known how long it lasted. It could have been an eternity for all they could tell. When at last the sounds of agony and explosions were replaced with an eerie blanket of silence, Rabbit didn’t give up his precious burden right away. The Jon was still locked firmly in his hold for some time thereafter, but both of them had lost their sense of chronology. Images of what had come to pass flashed before Rabbit’s eyes, causing him to tremble as well. His only comfort rested in the thought that he had covered The Jon’s photoreceptors in time; but deep down, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to protect him forever.

When finally Rabbit dared to look beyond the top of the brush, evidence of the ambush was strewn over the landscape. Of the six privates that accompanied the automatons in their squad, five of their corpses were accounted for. Gruesome booby traps lay exposed and dormant, their work complete. The bamboo whip that clocked a private earlier still had the poor young man impaled; a few paces away, a mace hung from a branch, its spikes dyed red from blood.

Rabbit only allowed himself a moment to take it all in; his photoreceptors immediately scanned the environment for an entirely different purpose. 

He tried sending a message through his internal wifi, but, just like always, it was hopelessly static. He loudly whispered The Spine’s name, but was too afraid of lingering attackers to elevate to a reasonable volume. The Jon, still shielded behind the brush, whimpered nervously.

Rabbit turned toward him. “Stay,” he commanded, setting his index figure at the brass bot for emphasis. “Don’t move a muscle unless I tell you to. You hear?”

The Jon was still trembling violently, but managed to nod. He watched his eldest brother as Rabbit moved carefully out from behind the brush, scanning the environment intensely to avoid any traps that might have been missed. He shook lightly with anticipation, but tried to keep on a cool head, at least to save face if not to maximize his efficiency. He tried to avoid the worst case; The Spine hadn’t gotten captured. He couldn’t have been. If he had—Rabbit shook his head. He wouldn’t consider it. Not before he did a thorough sweep—

A presence was suddenly behind him, and he reeled, turning and pointing his carbine with enough swiftness to almost knock himself off his own feet.

“Whoa, whoa!”

Rabbit almost fainted right then and there from a mixture of relief and horror. He was simultaneously ecstatic and terrified to find that he had aimed his carbine squarely at his own brother’s chest plate. There The Spine stood, hands held defensively aloft.

“Oh for cremini’s sake, The Spine!” Rabbit cried, lowering the weapon. “I have half a mind to knock you right in the knee caps. Don’t scare me like that!”

But before The Spine could retort, Rabbit had him enveloped in an alloy-crushing hug. The titanium robot gratefully reciprocated it, but only briefly before pulling back to look over his brother for damages.

“Are you all right?”

Rabbit’s expression was dark and humorless. “Peachy.”

“And The Jon?” The Spine asked, allowing a hint of anxiety to creep into his otherwise unflappable demeanor. He looked expectantly over Rabbit’s shoulder toward the brush that he had been using for cover.

“He’s okay,” Rabbit exhaled, nodding toward the makeshift hiding spot. “Just scared out of his wits. I told him to stay put over there. What about you?”

“I’m fine.”

Rabbit quirked a brow, disbelieving. The Spine relented, not wanting to fuss.

“Bit of shrapnel to the knee,” the tall silver robot said, nodding down toward his left leg. A patch of oil stained part of the pant leg where a telltale rip indicated the offensive shard, since removed. “But nothing too serious.”

“We’ll get you patched soon as we get back to HQ,” Rabbit said, clapping The Spine on the back. He had been avoiding looking outward toward the war zone where the casualties were all accounted for, but he spared a quick, pained glance toward the scene before immediately training his optics away. He had been in three other wars, but he would never get used to it. Not the least when faced against the Vietcong’s inhumane methods of warfare. “Wish I could say the same for them,” he added quietly, almost inaudibly. The Spine acknowledged the reference without taking a look himself. He had seen quite enough of it all ready, having been the midst of the attack and narrowly escaping death or capture himself. He was only thankful his brothers stayed out of the line of fire, but his core ached when he was forced to calculate the damages. He tried hard to defend his squad; he was their leader and it was his duty to see them through to complete their mission. And he failed.

“Five deaths,” he murmured. He lifted one of his hands and it numbly found its way to Rabbit’s shoulder. “One missing.”

The light sound of rustling caused them both to go rigid and turn defensively toward the source of the acoustic phenomenon, carbines swung around. But they both went lax when it was merely The Jon who emerged from the brush, looking the worse for wear, his clothes and hair blanketed in dirt and dust from the aftermath. As soon as his optics landed on The Spine, he broke into a sprint and all but threw himself limply at the titanium bot, who scooped him up effortlessly. The embrace was wordless. The Spine returned it generously, feeling his youngest brother tremble as he buried his brass face into the elder bot’s shoulder.

“You’re all right,” The Spine said, almost to reassure himself more than anyone else. He gently pulled away and set The Jon down so that he could give him a good look-over as if to verify that statement.

“I thought I told you to stay put,” Rabbit muttered half-heartedly, but The Jon barely moved to acknowledge the remark. He seemed to be working at keeping a set of oily tears at bay.

“It’s my fault,” The Jon lamented, staring guiltily at his boots. He tried to look sidelong at the sight of destruction, but Rabbit purposefully blocked his view, looking at The Jon with unabashed scrutiny. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the copper bot deadpanned, disbelieving.

The Jon shook his head weakly, optics dim. “I…I knew…knew that something—”

“Don’t,” The Spine said flatly, placing a hand authoritatively on The Jon’s shoulder. “None of this is your fault, The Jon. It’s nobody’s fault. Do you understand that?” Underneath, The Spine felt like a hypocrite saying it, knowing full-well that the blame was all his. But his tone left no room for qualifications. The Jon nodded somewhat, but his face was full of disbelief. He didn’t know how to articulate, and he was too exhausted to try.

Rabbit noted how The Spine favored one leg and how The Jon looked like he was on the verge of collapse. He moved forward to usher his brothers along. “Let’s go,” he urged, placing a hand on both their backs. “We can’t stay here much longer. You need to get that leg looked at.”

Ordinarily, The Spine would argue, but this time he was feeling too defeatist and disillusioned to put up a fight. Their comrades had been murdered, the clearing was in shambles, and the mission was failed. Rabbit was trying to keep face, but the trauma was in his optics. The Jon’s tremors were frightfully persistent, and with any luck he would remain on both feet for most of the walk back without incident. The three of them stalked on together in eerie silence, finding comfort singularly in each other’s company.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
That night, The Spine made it back into their tent, his knee soldered back up and wrapped in linen to limit mobility. He entered to find his brothers sitting isolated, Rabbit looking absently forward, his arm slung protectively around The Jon, who was finally powered down into a phase of fitful stasis. Luckily, the other infantry avoided them as usual. It was a night like this that the robots required rest without confrontation.

The Spine sat down on cat next to Rabbit, leaning up against the tent wall.

“Hope you don’t blame yourself,” the copper bot said quietly before The Spine could get a word in. The titanium bot only shot him a startled look. “You really ought to take your own advice.”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Rabbit looked forward resignedly. He knew there was no talking The Spine out of his self-induced guilt trips, try as he might; the silver automaton would never stop trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Images of the previous days flashing before his optics limited his ability to argue diplomatically with his uptight sibling, so he let the battle fatigue take its toll and this allowed for a rare moment of silence.

“You should get some stasis,” The Spine said eventually.

Rabbit almost snorted. “So should y-y-you.”

The Spine sighed, exasperated. “It’s going to catch up to you,” he cautioned. “When was the last time you got some rest?”

“I’ll be the one in-in-interrogating you out of brotherly concern. I’m the oldest.”

“By three weeks.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

The Spine chuckled without humor. “You’re a stubborn ass.”

“’Least I don’t have a stick up mine all the damn time.”

A light whimper interrupted the banter and both the bots’ optics shot toward The Jon, still nestled in Rabbit’s arm. The elevated volume might have disturbed his all but unreliable stasis, but he had nightmares so often that it took very little to interrupt some semblance of rest anyway. He squirmed a bit, as if in the midst of one of his many gruesome visions, and another tremor started to wrack his diminutive frame. Rabbit tightened his grasp reassuringly, but to little avail.

A sigh escaped the copper bot. “I’m wuh-worried about this one,” he said, gesticulating toward the brass robot’s trembling form. A useful way to deflect the argument, and Rabbit fully anticipated The Spine’s response.

“That’s one thing we can agree on.”

“All those things that happened earlier today—I mean, this entire thing…” Rabbit waved vaguely in the air. His mismatched optics were empty of life. “It’s all just—”

“It’s beyond words.”

Rabbit nodded weakly. “I hope he didn’t see it,” he whispered, a quixotic gleam in his optics. “I tried...tr-tried to make sure that he di-didn’t.”

“Sometimes it seems like he sees these things before anyone else does,” The Spine said speculatively, genuinely confounded. Ever since The Jon had been switched on, it was clear that he was…different, to say the least. But while he was often written off as a whimsical imbecile by people who didn’t know him any better, he seemed to have an internal clock that functioned uniquely. The Spine and Rabbit had been long acquainted with his notions…but none of them, not even The Jon himself, completely understood how they worked.

Rabbit had been shaking his head. “Those soldiers…these humans, they’re so…fragile…you put a cartridge under their feet, and they just… _spray_ —"

“Stop. Go into stasis. Please, Rabbit,” The Spine implored, scared for his brother as the latter seemed to barely be capable of keeping his optics online. “I’ll make sure he’s okay. I’ll make sure you both are.”

“W-what about you? When are you going to rest?”

“When I’m dead.”

“N-n-not funny,” Rabbit said, but the veil of exhaustion was weakening his resolve and the presence of his younger brother seemed to placate his protective resolve to remain vigilant. The strength of his emergency systems pumping electricity to near overload all day was waning rapidly; and by some miracle independent of his own volition, he nodded off into a light stasis. His head tilted lightly and rested stop The Jon’s.

The Spine sighed in relief, absently stroking his knee. He and his brothers survived one more night, but this war was killing them. It was like none other that they had been shipped off to before; the morale, the humanity, the cohesiveness among the rank and file, was all but absent. Previous rules had been eradicated, unspoken rules between human beings that constituted the unwritten properties of interpersonal treatment, even in the cruel clutches of war—they were gone. It was a harsh reality. Too harsh for some to take.

The entire camp had hunkered down and the only sound that filled the atmosphere was the light rattling of The Jon’s trembling form as his systems attempted to hang onto stasis. The Spine looked at him, tucked into Rabbit’s side. Unexpected anger flooded over The Spine; he and his family had undergone countless calamities as a result of their involvement, but nobody but themselves could be bothered to give a damn. The innocent Jon just wasn’t built for this conflict; granted, no one was. But getting the small brassold bot to go to war was like asking for a fly to beat up a horse; his malfunctions ran deeper than a rusted joint or a frayed wire. The tremors had been going on for weeks and were only getting worse. It all went against every fiber of his nature. The Spine knew for a long time that Rabbit made a point to shield their little brother from the gruesome visuals of death and torture…but he was woe to acknowledge that even they couldn’t protect him from every last horror.

The Spine shook the thoughts out of his head. It was useless to dwell. He would remain awake as usual, optics online and vigilant. He had to protect them. And surely enough, they would all see another day into this god-forsaken war.


End file.
